There are countless inventions dealing with the instant genre, some of which purport to fold combination chair-cots or other forms of furniture combined with a cot. However, an exhaustive search of patents, literature and marketplace wares has failed to disclose any individual piece of furniture, namely a chaise-cot, that can be readily folded to an optimum, truly compact ensemble. Therefore, this inventor has concluded that the most distinct (and major) disadvantage of prior and current art is that when items of the genre are collapsed or folded, the remaining package is either bulky and/or occupies an inordinate amount of space.
An invention by Egger, U.S. Pat. No. 3,165,354 issued in Jan. 1965, exemplifies the aforementioned disadvantage. This collapsible deck chair, indicative of current folding chaise art, appears to be a well thought out embodiment responding to the particular needs pointed out by its inventor. Nevertheless, when folded to its carriage structure, the collapsible deck chair becomes a rather ungainly, voluminous package. The disadvantageous folded geometry of the Egger invention is due in no small part to the fact that the collapsibility is achieved by folding an essentially longitudinal, articulated mechanism at the points of articulation. Since these points of articulation (fold) appear only along the longitudinal or body-length dimension, there is no way to close or diminish the stand-apart distances of the parallel, longitudinal frame members.
What is definitely lacking in the Egger Art was provided in some part by Groom in his invention of a collapsible chair, detailed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,258,931, which issued in 1981. Groom's invention realizes a collapsible chair, comprised of a frame with fabric suspended between portions thereof, that folds to a remarkably compact set of packages. Unfortunately, Groom's "folding" envisions a form of disassembly and, further, is directed to the collapsibility of a singular piece of furniture, not a duplex or combination such as the instant inventor's. In this regard, a patent issued in 1934 to Kivler, U.S. Pat. No. 1,977,766, appears to anticipate some of Groom's idea, but does so without disassembly, and by folding the fabric of the chair. In 1984, Elaschuk was issued U.S. Pat. No. 4,437,700, which took the Kivler art one step further. Elaschuk's invention mechanized his collapsible or folding chair idea, but with the addition of supporting struts which themselves folded by collapsing or folding away from the vertices of criss-crossing frame members. Unfortunately, like all of his predecessors, Elaschuk retained a folded package of unusual length because the invention was not framewise articulative.
Perhaps the most pertinent prior art was expressed in earlier patents issued to Clough and Spring (U.S. Pat. No. 1,217,085), Uline (U.S. Pat. No. 1,858,254) and Rosenbaum (U.S. Pat. No. 2,121,100) in 1917, 1930 and 1936, respectively. All of these inventions dealt with foldable or collapsible combination furniture items, that is, Clough and Spring folded a cot-seat, Uline folded a double chair (settee) and Rosenbaum folded a cot and duplex chair. Although the folding mechanisms of these inventions appeared at points ingenious, the user-purchaser was nonetheless left with a piece of furniture that could be folded at best to a rather clumsy, bulky package. Thus it appears, from this retrograde analysis of the prior art, that the initial problems of foldable furniture in general, and foldable duplex furniture items in particular, were with the art from its inception up to the present.
It appeared to the instant inventor that the only feasible method of constructing a truly foldable dual purposed or duplex piece of furniture such as a chaise-cot would be to fabricate a frame that was not only articulative and foldable along its lateral (longitudinal) dimension, but that would also be foldable along the transverse (cross-body) dimension. Thus, where earlier inventors were able to achieve a folded package that still retained the transverse, but diminished lateral dimensions, the instant inventor, by a novel folding of cross members and supporting struts is able to finally achieve a compact, easily carried package. But merely being able to conceive such folding along the transverse portions of the frame is not enough. In the aforementioned invention of Groom, cross body frame members are collapsed, but not without disassociating them from other fundamental elements of the invention.
To be truly functional as a chaise-cot, while being ultimately collapsible to a small compact and tidy package, the frame, exclusive of the fabric or webbing which is attached at discrete locations to certain frame members, must as earlier mentioned be foldable at the longitudinal points of articulation as well as any crosswise supports or transverse frame elements. At the points of fold, the frame members must have either inherent or purposefully mechanized locking devices. The fabric used to provide support for the reclining body must be light, strong and preferably of a ventilating webbing or netting.